Reader question: Where can I get solar-powered air-con?

Over the Christmas break I got an email from reader Cheryl, asking if there is any commercially available solar-powered air-conditioning. I’d written a post about research into this a few years ago, and so I decided to follow up and see how it was going.

Heating and cooling are one of our major uses of household energy in Australia. It makes good sense to try to get that energy from clean sources instead of our usual coal-fired power plants.

Unfortunately, Cheryl, it seems like we’re not much further forward on this idea. I found one place, Australian Sun Energy, which offers a system for large buildings like offices, shops or hospitals.  And many large electrical goods companies are looking into making systems for households. But there aren’t any residential solar-powered air-conditioners available for sale in Australia yet.

As an alternative, you could attach solar panels to your current system. Panels can be bought from several green energy shops around Australia. However, the amount of energy required is probably more than you can generate from a few small panels.

So what else can you do? You’ve got a few options:

• Get all your home energy use from clean energy sources by installing a full photovoltaic solar system for your house like Gavin did, or switching to Green Power like I did.
• Reduce the amount of electricity you’re using to cool your house. This might mean adding insulation, venting your roof space, shading your windows with trees, using blockout curtains during the day, and switching to the most energy-efficient air-con system you can find that suits your needs. There’s some good information on how to do this at Days of Change.
• Learn how to get the most out of your current air-conditioner by reading the “Efficient Use” section at the Synergy website.
• Try to do without air-conditioning when possible – I’ve got a few tips for beating the heat.

If anyone has further information on solar air-con, please leave a comment so we can all benefit. And if you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer, leave a comment or email me at info @ gogreeneraustralia.com and I’d be happy to look into it for you.

How about a personal carbon trading card?

Norfolk Island. Credit: Steve Daggar

I’ve been digging into the carbon pricing issue lately, and have found a new twist on it: personal carbon trading! It’s being trialled on Norfolk Island, and it’s pretty interesting. Norfolk Island is sort of west of Brisbane, and not quite north of New Zealand, and they’ve got about 2000 people living there.

The system they’ve taken on is that everyone on the island gets a card with a number of carbon emission permits on it. Every time you pay for petrol or electricity, your card gets charged. If you decide to ride your bike a lot, or switch to energy efficient appliances, you can trade your unused permits for cash at the end of the year. I’m not sure what you do if you run out of permits too quickly though!

Like any other cap and trade scheme, the amount of permits given out is reduced every year. Eventually people will have to switch to clean energy sources or give up their car to get under the permit cap, but they’ve got time to slowly adjust and make plans for the future. And if they make lots of changes early, well, they get that extra cash which is great.

However, I think this kind of individual carbon tracking can really only work in a closed community. Living on an island with a small population means that they can easily see what’s causing emissions and work out personal trades and deals among themselves.

I don’t think it’d work as well for large cities or nations, because there’d be so much more paperwork and individual permits to keep an eye on. For large populations, I think it’s better to price the carbon at the source where it’s created, not at the zillion points where it’s used.

Still, just because a solution doesn’t work for everyone on the planet, doesn’t mean people shouldn’t give it a go. If Norfolk Island can iron out the kinks, maybe lots of remote communities will adopt it.

It’s definitely simpler for a small group than getting involved in big international emissions trading systems. And I’m always in favour of experimenting – you never know what you’ll learn from it!

Aussie ingenuity

Image courtesy of Ocean Linx

The Victa ride-on mower.
Black-box flight recorders.
The wine cask.

All of these are Australian inventions. Aussies are known for our creative approach to problem-solving, coming up with new inventions all through our short history.

We’ve also done pretty well in the eco-friendly invention department: the Hills Hoist, the dual-flush toilet and solar hot-water tanks came from the land down under too. You can check out a full list of Australian inventions on Wikipedia, it’s pretty interesting.

But given that we pioneered solar hot-water, there’s been a real lack of Aussie innovation in the solar-power area over the last decade or so. The Howard government cut a lot of research and development funding, and so our solar technicians all went overseas. They found supportive environments in Japan and Germany, with funding for their research and help to get their solar products to market.

And guess what? Germany and Japan are now leaders in solar technology, both residential and large scale. They’re exporting their solar panels to the world. We really missed the boat on that one.

Unfortunately, it’s happening again. Wave power technology is at a point where it needs a boost, and nothing is coming from the government to help. Australian investors are only interested in mining these days.

So our wave power researchers like Carnegie and Ocean Linx have to rely on overseas money. They’re looking to Ireland and the USA for help. And once again any gains they make will benefit the investors and people there, as they lead the way in a technology that is so promising for our 21st century needs.

When did we become so unadventurous? Why are we letting down our brightest and best minds? It really is a shame. I wish I knew what to do about it.

Concentrating solar power – what is it?

Last night I was reading through the Beyond Zero Emissions summary report, the one which lays out a plan for Australia to move to 100% renewable energy by 2020. Their plan relies lots of energy efficiency to cut back on the amount of baseload we need. Then we switch to nearly 40% wind power, which we’re all familiar with, and on nearly 60% ‘concentrating solar thermal’, which I had to look up.

CST is really interesting technology. As you might guess from it’s name, it’s a type of solar power. But instead of photovoltaic panels, it uses mirrors to reflect sunlight at a tower. You could use this energy to heat water, to drive a steam turbine to generate electricity the same way old-fashioned coal plants do.

But the Beyond Zero plan relies on molten salt storage technology being attached to the tower. It’s exactly what it sounds like – the heat and energy are used to keep salt hot instead of water. Then the molten salt can be stored until it’s needed, at which point its heat is transferred to water for the turbines.

You can read all about the technical details on Wikipedia – concentrating solar power, solar power towers, and molten salt. Or just take a peek at this illustration from the Beyond Zero report:

Solar Power Tower: click to open full size in a new window

There’s a commercial CST electricity plant already running in Spain – the PS10 – and another one in the USA – the Sierra Sun Tower. They don’t have the salt storage though. And there are other operational concentrating solar projects around the world too.

The way Beyond Zero tells it, CST in Australia could be run as follows:

• 12 solar power tower sites across Australia
• each site approximately 15km x 15km
• total land required about the size of Kangaroo Island, or a couple of Northern Territory cattle stations
• only using 12% of the water needed for conventional coal plants
• costs 5 – 6 cents per kilowatt hour after all sites complete (comparable to coal now)
• costs $175 billion to set up (about 2% of our current GDP)
• as much of the labour and components to be sourced from Australia as possible, to create jobs.

It’s a fascinating idea and I really like it. It’d need a really strong committment from the government to see it though, but then again, so would any solution to our dirty energy problems. What do you think?

Would you like a green, clean job?

Recently I posted about ending the coal industry in Australia. Although it only contributes 1.3% of Australia’s employment, that’s still over 200,000 people affected by the change. But it doesn’t have to mean that they’re out of work – we’ll be needing lots of people to work in new clean energy industries.

Plus, we can’t be telling our kids to head off to the mines and rigs for a well-paid job when they get older. It’s not really a secure industry anymore: they’ll be needing something with a long-term future.

But what will the jobs in the clean energy industry look like? What kinds of things will they do?

I’ve taken a look at the ABC’s Ace Day Jobs website and picked out a few jobs there that will be in big demand over the next decade. Each link has an interview with someone who already works in the industry, with info on what sort of people will enjoy the work, and what kind of training you need.

• Solar energy researcher – the more solar the better!
• Civil engineer: recycled water supply systems – we have to get smarter about water
• Senior forestry consultant – playing a part in the new carbon trading market
• Apprentice electrician – help the upgrade to a smart grid electricity system
• Soil scientist – testing for pollution in soil and groundwater
• Ranger – to protect and promote our national forests and parks
• Facade engineer and architects – making buildings more sustainable
• Urban planner – to make our cities more sustainable, creating walkable communities with plenty of green spaces.

But wait, there’s more!

Check out www.cleanenergyjobs.com.au for even more examples of the types of jobs we, our families and our friends could be doing in the future. Each case study is a link to information about someone with a job in solar and wind power, waste & recycling, water supply, energy efficiency and so on.

Half of these things didn’t even exist as jobs when I was a kid – I think the possibilities are really exciting, don’t you?